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Letters: Be CO aware

Port Renfrew resident writes about bear/human conflicts

I find it strange that the Sooke News Mirror would dedicate its entire front page (Sept. 19) to the Utopian dogmatic propaganda that the Ministry of Environment is serving in response to a province-wide problem of too many black bears in rural communities.

“We have to live with bears because we can’t shoot them all and move them all. Reactive destruction of bears entering our communities is not a viable or sustainable solution to the problem.” I completely disagree.

The C.O.and Bear Aware spokespeople admit they are complete failures, “prior to the bear aware program, Sooke did not have resources available to local residents who come into contact with bears,” and they still don’t.

Your animal conflict call goes through the R.A.P.P. line. The call is compared to what is called a “decision tree.” What other enforcement agency in B.C. responds to less than 20 per cent of its calls? They do not advise residents of dangerous animals or if they’ve been removed. One way to guarantee a CO to show up is to say you’ve shot one. What for years was known as a control action is now “hunting.” By definition, hunting now includes jumping up and down and screaming at the offending predator to leave.

Fact: Habituated bears are more dangerous to people.  We have leash laws and dangerous dog laws but these urbane insane minions at the MOE want us to coexist with wild animals. It has never worked historically, its not working now and it won’t work in the future. Managing your attractants is not going to stop the bear population from growing and coming into your neighbourhood.

We need to start culling. There should be mass resignations. Call your MLA’s and  mayors, demand accountability over ignorance

We shouldn’t have to live with predators, because of the extreme failure of game management in our province.

Quit playing roulette with our children and pets.

Greg Klem

Port Renfrew